It's Time to Up Your Instagram Game!
Several of my LinkedIn connections expressed interest in the Instagram Tips & Tricks workshop that I taught last month, and wouldn’t you know it, one of them has offered to book a space for me to teach the very same workshop later this month! Special thanks to Joseph one of the organizers of the New York Power Team meetup group for reaching out to me and helping to make this month’s Instagram workshop happen. The New York Power Team meetup group is the largest monthly meeting personal growth and leadership community in New York. They have been meeting since 1993, initially as a mastermind community inspired by the work of Peak Performance coach Tony Robbins. Learn more about the New York Power Team meetup group by looking them up on Meetup.com. I am so grateful to have Joseph’s support!
Now that’s the power of social media! This is a great example of how social media can generate a sort of “virtual word of mouth.” It started back in June with Facebook when I posted about a workshop on Instagram and Pinterest for SCORE NYC that I had taught. All of a sudden I had all sorts of people asking when I’d be teaching another workshop! That led to last month’s Instagram Tips & Tricks workshop. During that workshop I demonstrated Instagram Stories and ended up making an Instagram Story video of my class with some fun visual effects. Then I shared the video on LinkedIn and people took notice. I’ve reposted the Instagram Story video in my feed so for those who haven’t seen it you can see it on my Instagram feed by clicking here or on the screen shot of my Instagram feed.
Scroll to the bottom of this post for full details on my Instagram Workshop later this month.
Instagram recently hit 1 billion active users. It also has the highest interaction rate per follower of all social media platforms.
It's DEFINITELY Time to Up Your Instagram Game!
Instagram can be kind of daunting to understand with its many different features. Let’s start with the Instagram feed. Did you know that besides posting a photo or video clip directly into your Instagram feed, there are 4 different types of posts that you can create? Can you name them? There are 2 for photos: carousel and layout, and 2 for video: Boomerang and Hyperlapse. Then there’s Instagram Stories, your highlight reel and now IGTV. Unlike most other social media platforms, Instagram was created to be used exclusively on mobile phones. It is definitely for people on the go and who practically live on their phones.
For beginners the one piece of advice I have is to start off posting only once a day, if you must post twice a day, space them far apart, i.e. about 5-6 hours apart. The reason for this is that most people on Instagram post 1-2 times a day. According to this Union Metrics study, the average brand posts 1.5 times per day. If you’ve ever been on Instagram and scrolled through your feed, I’m sure that you can imagine what it would be like if your feed started getting flooded with posts coming from one single Instagram account. Pretty soon you’d feel as though you were being spammed and that your feed has been monopolized. Don’t be the person that does that. It’s not to say that you can’t post several times a day, but it would not be a good idea to do that until you develop a dedicated following that loves your content so much that they can’t get enough of it, and wouldn’t mind seeing several posts a day.
If you have several photos from an event or vacation that you’ve just snapped and are dying to share, put them in a carousel post or make a layout photo with them.
The other thing to consider about your posting frequency on Instagram is consistency. You need to come up with a regular posting schedule that you can keep up with. Is it realistic to post several times a day? Are you going to be able to keep up with that long term? The answer for you is going to be a combination of deciding a posting schedule that realistically works for you and monitoring the amount of engagement are you getting.
Another suggestion for those who have lots that they want to to share and post to Instagram- use Instagram Stories. Feel free to go crazy there because with Instagram Stories, people who want to know what you are up to will go look at your Instagram Story. And you won’t be hogging up other people’s Instagram feeds. Another good thing about Instagram Stories is that you can be a little less polished in your Stories since they automatically disappear in 24 hours.
I’m looking forward to teaching all of the fun things you can do with Instagram later this month!
Recently Instagram introduced several new features including the much talked about IGTV. Just what are these new features and how can you use them to promote your business or personal brand? Is IGTV for you? And do you know all there is to know about Instagram Stories?
In the workshop we’ll discuss all of this and more.
What are the new features just introduced to Instagram this summer?
What is IGTV and is it for you?
New and lesser known features of Instagram Stories
Special tips for Instagram Stories
I will of course cover some fundamentals of Instagram as well:
Optimizing your Instagram bio
Types of photo and video posts
Best practices for your Instagram posts
How to grow you following and get discovered on Instagram
At the end of this workshop you will have an understanding of how to use all of Instagram's features to organically promote your business or personal brand. Want to know how to register for the workshop? See complete details below.
Instagram Workshop
Date & Time: Thursday, September 20 2018, 6:00-8:00 pm
Venue: WeWork Tower 49
Address: 12 East 49th Street, New York, NY 10017
(Between Madison Ave & 5th Ave.)
Subway: B/D/F/M train to 47-50 St. Rockefeller Center, 4/5/6/7/S train to 42 St. - Grand Central
Directions: https://goo.gl/maps/ZP7qYwzgQqM2
Tickets: instagramworkshop9.eventbrite.com ($45 Online)
